English II H
Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From Nature and The American Scholar
For each of the following quotes, provide a brief paraphrase in your own words
AND a personal reaction to the idea presented.
“In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue”
“In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period
soever of life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth.”
“I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal
Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”
(When in nature) “The name of the nearest friend sounds foreign and accidental: to be
brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance.”
“In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds
somewhat as beautiful as his nature.”
“Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student’s behoof?
And finally, is not the true scholar the only true master?”
“To the young mind, everything is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to
join two things and see in them one nature; then three; then three thousand; and so,
tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing
anomalies, discovering roots running underground whereby contrary and remote things
cohere and flower out from one stem.”
“The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world
around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it
again. It came into him life; it went out from him truth.”
“The writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforth it is settled the book is perfect; as love
of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes noxious; the
guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the
incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands
upon it, and makes an outcry if it is disparaged”
“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which
Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon
were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.”
“Books are the best of things, well-used; abused, among the worst.”